I was just looking into a few things and it occurred to me how weird us programmers must seem to the rest of the world. Here's a partial list of some of the reasons why:

We draw trees upside down; We call the "top" of a tree its "root"; and often we talk of a leaf's siblings, parents and sometimes even children.

We write tons of stuff, but we almost always write the middle before we write the beginning or end; in a lot of code if you want to look at the first and last things that happen you need to look at the bottom of the file.

We often start counting at 0 and call 0 the 1st number; except when we start counting at 1 when we like to say that one is stored in the zero'th index

There is no text in our lives, we deal with strings, but not ones you can tie a knot in.

We often operate like the machines we use... Ask a busy programmer a question and it can be minutes before the programmer context switches and replies to the question.

We have a tendency to consider 'or' in colloquial conversation to be the inclusive 'or' and not the exclusive 'or' that the rest of the world seem to use. Thus "should we go to the movies or to dinner" gets the answer "yes" and not the expected choice...

Not only, but also some of us -including me- know by heart 32768 and 65536. Though I've yet to meet anyone who knows the output of perl -le 'print 1<<24' or perl -le 'print ~0' (32-bit machine here!) in anticipation, albeit I suspect quite more than one does. Anyone here?

Ouch! Now that I'm staring at them I fear I will learn them by heart too... ;-)

42? From The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It's the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything (“what is 6 times 9”, correct in base 13). For other
Random Numbers click the link.

Jen: Ovid, what have you been doing lately?
Ovid: Reading "Mastering Regular Expressions."
... short pause followed by much laughter ...
Jen: I thought you knew how to talk!
Greg: Hello, how are you?
Jen: Can you direct me to my hotel?
Greg: How much for twenty minutes?

We analyse queueing systems everywhere and tell people they need more bandwidth.

C is a language, not merely a letter of the alphabet.

We enjoy sitting in front of computers for hours at a time.

We (well maybe just me) laugh at things like: 'Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway' (Tanenbaum)

People don't die in flame wars.

We expect people to understand when you explain how you were using the wrong config spec to build your code because the one you normally use doesn't work for this product because there is a different version of the embedded software on the product's hardware.

We get excited over CSS 2.1 compliance in IE7, but can't understand what SOX compliance means.

There are probably loads more.

How can you feel when you're made of steel? I am made of steel. I am the Robot Tourist.Robot Tourist, by Ten Benson

3. We often start counting at 0 and call 0 the 1st number; except when we start counting at 1 when we like to say that one is stored in the zero'th index

My 5-year-old son counts the number of rinses he does after brushing his teeth, and starts at zero. I've never mentioned counting from zero to any of my kids -- he just did it, and *sniff* it makes me proud.

Went to join the gridlock to see it
Held an eclipse party
Watched a live feed
I cn"t see tge kwubosd to amswr thus
I tried to see it, but 8000 miles of rock got in the way
What eclipse?
Wanted to see it, but they wouldn't reschedule it
Read the book instead